Anyone here actually enjoy solid state amps? Is there any reason in 2014 to hate solid state amps with as much passion as people still seem to? Whenever I see people hating on them they refer to 90's crate and line 6 amps that are at the "first amp for a 13 year old" price point, with tones that are dialed in by someone who has only picked up a guitar like 5 times in their life. As a distortion pedal user, I have a hard time totally condemning them, especially when many solid states sound quite reasonable. So what are your favorite SS amps?

just cant. i tried to be an ss man for about 4 years 10 years back for gigging. i was like blah blah more reliable. first off it never achieved the warmth my tube amps have, and second off the ss amps i had crapped out just as often as my tube amps. you can never pry my fender/vox/marshall tube amps from me now unless you kill me with lazers and chop off my head. (i would like to think without decapitation zombie me would still fight off people for my tube amps.) i can see the application i guess if u want low volumes that dont travel through floors, but even than there is low wattage tube amps. everybody i know that plays ss amps i always recommend saving up and buying a nice tube amp. pedals and sweet guitars always get close to awesome tones, but imo the base is where its at and a nice amp is the most important part of anyones sound. i dunno i fucking love tube amps tho. id rather have a shitty guitar and no pedals and a sweet amp. i have about 8 or 9 giant amps taking up space. dont get me wrong ss can sound nice, but it just feels sterile to me.

havent made the switchand i freakin love the sounds im gettinim sure if i played through decent tubesid want a tube ampbut ive only tried a fewmy amps always clean anywayso a loud solidstate does my tricks just finei just got an old randall rb300thats my favorite to play through right nowclean foreverbut loaded with beefaronithe other amp in my setup is a randall commander ivlove that tooand i have an acoustic150 that kills for bass

ryan summit wrote:havent made the switchand i freakin love the sounds im gettinim sure if i played through decent tubesid want a tube ampbut ive only tried a fewmy amps always clean anywayso a loud solidstate does my tricks just finei just got an old randall rb300thats my favorite to play through right nowclean foreverbut loaded with beefaronithe other amp in my setup is a randall commander ivlove that tooand i have an acoustic150 that kills for bass

I don't really play any doom, but I have to say that the Peavey Mark VI that I had was pretty badass. It had a good amount of wattage, it went down to 2 ohms, it had an FX loop, a crossover, a compressor, and a shitload of EQing. And it had a cool breakup when you cranked it.

Ancient Astronaught wrote:I've wanted an Ampeg VH140C for quite a while. Their famous for their 90's scooped metal sound but the mids were actually really good. But their getting harder and harder to find.

Likewise on the VH140C. I'm always on the lookout for one, but they just don't seem to pop up as often as I think they should.

I sold Ryan Summit that ACC 150. I missed it. Recently found another for cheap that needed some work and jumped on it. It hums but I'm pretty sure a few new caps and it will be good to go. Might just be a ground issue.

I've used a ton of SS amps over the years. My first "real" amp was a Randall Commander II head that I adored. One of my favorite amps of all time is a Sunn Beta Lead, which is also among the loudest amps I've ever owned. Had a couple other Randalls and a couple Acoustic Control Corps 150's, a peavey transtube supreme head or two and probably some others I'm forgetting. I've had tons of different tube heads, too. It boils down to what works and what sounds good and lots of different things can sound very good. Right now I've been eyeballing one of those new Orange CR120 heads for a 2nd amp in my plan for a dual halfstack rig.